Scared in San Fran: Twitter SEC Filing Reveals Worry of Losing Advertisers, Staff over Elon Musk’s Buyout

In a recent SEC filing, Twitter acknowledged that its core advertising business may be at risk as ar result of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company. The far-left San Francisco company also admitted that the buyout could impact employee hiring and retention.

TechCrunch reports that in a recent filing with the SEC, Twitter acknowledged that its core advertising business could be affected as a result of the company takeover by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The company further revealed that the acquisition was likely to affect employee hiring and retention efforts among other factors.

The worries primarily relate to Musk’s alleged dedication to free speech and lack of assurance to brands that the platform will remain “brand safe,” post-acquisition. Musk has given little detail on what content will be allowed on the platform but has said that he believes any speech not deemed illegal by a government should be permitted on the platform.

Speaking at TED 2022, Musk said:

“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” said Musk.

“I don’t care about the economics at all.”

The tech mogul went on to describe his own definition of free speech, and his philosophy on content moderation.

“If in doubt, let the speech — let it exist,” said Musk. “If it’s a grey area, I would say, let the tweet exist.”

“But in a case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet.”

The SEC Filing comes just days ahead of Twitter’s presentation to media ad buyers at the 2022 NewFronts later this week. Later in the filing, Twitter explains that amid its ongoing risk factors, it continues to generate the “substantial majority of our revenue from advertising” and the loss of advertisers could significantly harm its business.

“We believe that our ability to compete effectively for advertiser spend depends upon many factors” Twitter stated, including “our reputation and the strength of our brand relative to our competitors, including advertisers’ perception of the health and safety of our platform.”

Read more at TechCrunch here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com